Previous Exhibits

Common Currents
Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center
March 1 – April 29, 2018
The exhibition will premiere at the newly renovated historic Progreso Building at 1300 Guadalupe Street across from the Guadalupe Theater.

In celebration of San Antonio’s Tricentennial year, six downtown artist-centric organizations: Artpace San Antonio, Blue Star Contemporary, Carver Community Cultural Center, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, the Mexican Cultural Institute, and the Southwest School of Art, will partner to present an exhibition that will illuminate the 300 years of their hometown’s history. Common Currents is a diverse, encyclopedic showcase of San Antonio’s history as told and rewritten by more than 300 visual and performing artists, invited to participate by their peers, and presented over 6 venues.

Drawing on the connections or currents that run through San Antonio’s vibrant creative community, each of the organizing partners began by inviting two artists. These initial 12 artists were then asked to invite two peer artists, until more than 300 were amassed. All of the participating artists were assigned one year of San Antonio’s history on which to reflect in the development of their work for Common Currents . This exhibition is presented chronologically through a variety of contemporary media across the six venues.

Common Currents draws a portrait of San Antonio, by San Antonians. With the “chain letter-inspired” framework for the exhibition, each organization takes a backseat, letting the participating artists make decisions that may traditionally be the role of the organization or curator. This provides for an exciting presentation of artistic connections spanning our center city’s art venues.

Artpace San Antonio / January 18 – March 4

Blue Star Contemporary / February 1 – May 7

Southwest School of Art / February 15 – April 22

Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center / March 1 – April 29

Carver Community Cultural Center / March 15

Mexican Cultural Institute / March 29 – May 7

Entre Orillas by Arlene Mejorado & Adriana Monsalve

Chicana Feelings by Sarah Castillo

Exhibition Run: December 8, 2017 – January 19, 2018

Opening Reception: Friday December 8, 2017, 6:00-9:00pm
The opening reception will debut the release of Femme Frontera, a book version of the exhibit published by Homie House Press. Music by Chulita Vinyl Club and light refreshments.

ENTRE ORILLAS is a dual project created by emerging artist Arlene Mejorado, through the mentorship of master artist, Adriana Yvette Monsalve. Through a compilation of photography, text and multimedia they create a space for conversations around the borderlands and the many ways it manifests in our lives. The exhibition is an act of cohesive and parallel storytelling that broadens the narrative on themes too often shown in one dimension.The project extends into an accessible digital platform, zine and transnational project to be exhibited in Mexico and beyond.

Adriana Monsalve:

I’m a storyteller and visual communicator that produces in-depth stories on topics ranging from identity to humanitarian issues through the nuances in between. As a daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean Republic of Colombia, I have struggled with the concept of “home.” As immigrants, we are everywhere and we have to belong somewhere so we’ve made habitats for ourselves in pocket towns of people like us. I’m documenting to show you something I’ve found and ultimately, something I am. I’m documenting so you know I was here.

Arlene Mejorado:

I am the daughter of immigrants, a nepantera, and passionate observer. I am a photographer specializing in creative documentary projects and visual storytelling. Based in San Antonio and raised in Los Angeles, my ancestral background and social upbringing inspires exploration in themes of migration, cultural hybridity, gender-queerness, and racial and ethnic identity. Through the mediums of photography and film, I experiment with the new and traditional methods of visual storytelling to illustrate complex experiences in diasporic communities.

Artist Statement

Adriana Monsalve and Arlene Mejorado have merged ideas central to their identities and experiences through a close collaboration that parallels two individual projects united by border and migration themes.The artists focus on ideas central to their identities and experiences through a close photography collaboration that parallels two individual projects united by borderland, transnationalism, and migration themes.

An autoethnographic project, CHICANA FEELINGS works to actualize a tactile reality of Mestiza Consciousness. A response to what has been rejected and embraced, it is the process of resolving conflict and loss in the context of mental health. By exploring these relationships, CHICANA FEELINGS makes meaning of survival with self-portraiture, paintings, video, and installation as it engages dialogue between anonymity and preservation.

Sarah Castillo is a mixed media visual artist based in San Antonio, Texas. Castillo obtained her Master’s degree in Bicultural Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio with thesis title – Art as an Embodied Practice: Artistic Expression, Conocimiento, and Identity Formation. She is a Resident Artist with Clamp Light Gallery and Studios, gallerist of Lady Base Gallery, and co-founder of Mas Rudas Collective. She has shown at Artpace, Institute of Texan Cultures, Mexic-Arte Museum, University of Texas at San Antonio, and was selected for the IV Biennial 2015 in Cd. Juárez and El Paso, Texas. She was recently awarded a San Antonio Artist Grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture for 2016.

ENTRE ORILLAS & CHICANA FEELINGS is supported in part by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture, and Southwest Airlines through a grant from the NALAC Fund for the Arts.

Día De Los Muertos Altar Exhibition

Extended to November 22, 2017

Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5:00pm

Free | Galería Guadalupe

Each year, the Galería Guadalupe holds space for community members, organizations and a featured artist to present altars dedicated to cherished loved ones who’ve passed. Several unique interpretations of traditional altars will be on display, including contributions by JT Brackenridge Elementary, local high schools and the SA Eye Bank.

Ana Fernandez, “Las Princessas”, 2017, Oil on Panel, 72 x 48 in

Ruth Buentello, “The Last Supper”, Acrylic on Canvas, 40 x 60 in

Ana Fernandez & Ruth Buentello Exhibitions

Opening Reception: Friday, September 1, 2017 6:00-9:00pm

Exhibit Runs September 1–October 6, 2017

Free | Galería Guadalupe

Galería Guadalupe presents “Eastside Westside” by Ana Fernandez & “Narratives Invented” by Ruth Buentello. A duo of solo shows grappling with place and perspective through a bi-cultural lens. The pairing will also feature a curation by Fernandez, featuring works by Junye Butler, Marcy McChesney, and Rosa Fernandez.

Galería Guadalupe presents an abbreviated retrospective of the works and life of artist Victoria Suescum. Mi Museo está en la calle is a solo show that highlights the artist’s time lived in both Panama and the United States through motifs lifted from the streets.

Suescum’s work explores the painting style of signage found on the walls of neighborhood shops ( tiendas ) such as beauty parlors, hardware stores, butcher shops and auto repair shops. Suescum adopts their odd color combinations, strange perspective and wild shifts in scale. These images are morphed into new and personal combinations.

Through the generous support of the Surdna Foundation, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center is proud to host Artist Lab. Now in it’s third year, the artist lab fellowship provides a select group of local visual artists an opportunity to exhibit their art. Through our partners at LiftFund, the fellowship offers an educational experience in both creative and business development, and an opportunity to build new networks between local artists and the national artistic field. The culmination of these experiences is manifested in a yearend exhibition.

Daniela Cavazos Madrigal presents an exhibition utilizing repurposed materials to create vessels for personal and shared narratives. Presented as installation, the work consists of multiple knitted, monochromatic pieces, embroidered with sayings and braided rope sculpted into text. The language used in Madrigal’s work is exclusively written in Spanish because it is the artist’s native language. This exhibition offers the viewer an opportunity to experience intersecting histories through language and the appropriation of the everyday and discarded.

El Color de la Obra

Jenelle Esparza

Interested in the historical anecdotes of South Texas, Jenelle Esparza’s newest body of work focuses in on cotton production and the predominately Latino labor force in cotton manufacturing along the US/ Mexico border. As a native of South Texas, with intergenerational ties to the picking fields, Esparza’s family is directly linked to this history. Through the use of photography and sculpture she is cultivating a conceptual documentation of the agricultural history of cotton. The exhibition aims to serve [within the borderlands] as an educational tool in understanding the social, economic, civil, and feminist lineage that was formed by cotton.

El Color de la Obra is funded by a San Antonio Artist Grant through the National

Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC).

Artist website: jenelleesparza.com

Getting the Big Picture: Mel Casas and the Politics of the 1960s and 70s

Mel Casas

Curator: Dr. Ruben C. Cordova

Special thanks to the Casas Family and to Ann and Jim Harithas for lending these works to the Museo Guadalupe.

June 5—October 24, 2015

Getting the Big Picture: Mel Casas and the Politics of the 1960s and 1970s, an exhibition of 21 large-scale acrylic paintings organized by guest curator Ruben C. Cordova, opens Friday, June 5, 2015 at the Museo Guadalupe in San Antonio, and runs through October 24, 2015.

Mel Casas (1929-2014) was an artist of national and international renown, as well as an important leader, theoretician, teacher, mentor, and administrator. He served as the first president and leading spokesperson for the San Antonio-based Con Safo art group, considered by many to be one of the most significant Chicano art groups in the 70s. Casas also taught at San Antonio College for 29 years and was the chair of the visual arts department for 12 of those years. Casas was born and raised in El Paso. He received his his BA from Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso) in 1956 and his MFA from the University of the Americas in 1958.

“Mel Casas was truly a seminal artist and an important part of the Chicano movement,” said Guadalupe executive director Jerry Ruiz. “Our community mourns his recent passing. The Guadalupe wanted to honor his memory by highlighting his achievements and showing his art at its political, compelling best. We’re proud to showcase his works and share them with the public. He’s an artist who really embodies our mission.”

Casas is best known for a series of 6’ x 8’ paintings he called Humanscapes. A number of these paintings appeared in notable exhibitions, including Casas’ major solo exhibitions, the 1975 Whitney Biennial, and DaleGas in 1978. They have also been featured in important group exhibitions that toured nationally and internationally, including “Ancient Roots, New Visions” (1977-1978), “The Latin American Spirit” (1988-1990), “Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985” (1991-1993), “La Frontera/The Border” (1993-1994), and “Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge,” (2001-2007).

“This exhibition is the first to focus exclusively on the core group of politically themed Humanscapes that Casas painted in the tumultuous decade between February 1968 and May 1977,” said guest curator Ruben C. Cordova.

The Humanscape series had its origin in 1965 when Casas drove past the San Pedro drive-in cinema in San Antonio. As he glimpsed up at the screen, he beheld a close-up shot of a woman speaking. From his distant perspective, her giant head appeared to be “munching” on trees in the adjacent landscape. This experience of divergent realities inspired 150 numbered Humanscapes that were painted between 1965 and 1989.

The Vietnam War and the policies of President Richard Nixon were primary catalysts for the social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s. Casas was a disabled Korean War veteran who was vehemently anti-war and anti-Nixon, and these antipathies served as inspiration for several paintings. While many of the paintings in this exhibition deal primarily with national issues including militarism and war, the United Farm Workers movement, and the assassination of political leaders, they also touch on local traditions, such as Fiesta in San Antonio, and international issues, such as the policy of apartheid in South Africa.

Cursive Wanderings

AnnMichele Morales

Jul 31—Sept 18, 2015, Galería Guadalupe

Since 2006, artists Greg Rubio and Ann-Michèle Morales have collaborated on snail-mail artists’ books, which are featured in Cursive Wanderings. This exhibition explores dialogue as an aesthetic tool as well as a physical and visual bridge for communication.

Dulce

Raul Gonzalez

May 21—Jul 22, 2015, Espacio Gallery

Dulce combines two bodies of paintings González has created over the past five years. Pop art, traditional Mexican candies, and the hip-hop culture inspire the first body of work.

“I use these life-sized candies as a way of glorifying the memories and sweetness of my childhood and embellishing the richness of Mexican heritage and culture,” González said. “When I think of my Mexican heritage, the first thing that comes to mind is the food – in this case, the sweets.”

The second body of paintings, González said, is a true reflection of who he is today. In this series, the artist uses contemporary abstract painting as a way to identify emotion, people, and feelings.

“In these paintings, I am reflecting on the joys and challenges of being a new father and taking on the role of a stay-at-home dad,” he said. “Even though there are moments of grief or frustration, every moment of raising a child is one of the sweetest things someone can experience in their lifetime.”

CAM 2015: MoveMe

For the fourth consecutive year, Contemporary Art Month (CAM) has chosen the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center to partner in the 2015 CAM Perennial Exhibition. Every year, CAM chooses a curator from outside of San Antonio to give a fresh perspective on the San Antonio art scene.

“Move Me” unites eight San Antonio artists whose work addresses displacement and transformation. The artworks included in the exhibition communicate various approaches to physical movement and the notion of being “moved.” Dancing is a central element in videos by Anne Wallace and Raul Gonzalez, while walking is the starting point for projects by Jimmy James Canales and Karen Mahaffy. Kristin Gamez and Roberto Celis explore more obscure performative actions by means of their own physicality. Gamez’s body is repeatedly dragged across the floor when she pushes the ties than bind her to their capacity and Celis’ body is altered into a musical instrument complete with taut strings to be played like a cello.

Sound and music are omnipresent in this exhibition, but audio perceptions are perhaps most momentous in the work of Justin Boyd. His sculptures house layered recordings of birds, trains, and ambient noise, and other evidence of human existence. Our senses are engaged even more acutely with Jennifer Ling Datchuk’s wearable eyebrows made of blue and white “Chinese” porcelain or a video of her carefully plucking her eyebrow hair one by one. Both of Datchuk’s projects bring issues concerning cultural identity, fetish, and body modification beautifully and painfully to the surface. They also reiterate the balancing act between an embrace of and resistance to change.

Many of the works presented in this exhibition are slightly seductive, yet curious actions that rely on the possibility of failure. They are very much about taking risks and pushing boundaries. It is impossible to characterize a multi-faceted community in one exhibition, but “Move Me,” presents a cross-section of creative practices that beg the viewer to consider how our bodies and minds occupy space and why we often become rooted in one place.

Recess: Remember to Play

Ethel Shipton

Mar 27—May 16, 2015, Espacio Gallery

Ethel Shipton was born and raised in Laredo, Texas. She received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. With a strong conceptual practice, her work has been exhibited in over 27 national and international venues including the Austin Museum of Art, Artpace, San Antonio and the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art. In 2011, Shipton was awarded Artist Honoree of the year at Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum.

Yet to be determined

David Alcantar

Jan 22 — Mar 11, 2015, Espacio Gallery

The exhibited works for “Yet to be Determined” explore the unfolding of narrative trajectories resulting from everyday choices that are made and the contexts that influence those decisions, or negotiations. They aim for heightened awareness of how actions made in one moment influence what we often refer to as destiny.

Artist Lab Inaugural Exhibition

The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center is proud to present the inaugural exhibition of the first generation of Artist Lab participants. Fernando Andrade, Kim Bishop, Nicole Geary, Daniela Riojas and Luis Valderaswill present their latest work. Through the generous support of the Surdna Foundation, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center has launched Artist Lab, a two year program for local San Antonio artists that provides an educational experience providing both creative and professional development.

Coyotes y Conejos

Ricky Armendariz

Sept 12 — Nov 10, 2014, Espacio Gallery

Ricky Armendariz’ alluring use of line, surface and negative/positive space creates a loving resistance to the vibrant colors of his romantic landscapes. Coyotes y Conejos, explores the idealization of the American panorama against hybrid symbols of Mexican, American and indigenous cultures that are etched in the artist’s borderland experience.

In a time of globalization, transcultural movement and the leveling of world commerce, economists believe that today the earth could be perceived as becoming flat. They have used this metaphor to describe the world economy. This condition can also be utilized in describing transcultural movement. With the ease of cross migration, cultures are continuing to collide at a more rapid rate. The globalization of culture, ideas and artistic practice is creating a new balance, interface and flat playing field. Artists further the notion of “flatness” by the appropriation of popular imagery from their own and other cultures. The exponential growth of digital communication has accelerated this process. The universal presence of the actual flat screen monitor has brought about a flat screen mentality. Yet artists are able to juggle their ethnicity, cultural experience and global views to create works that are multilayered and distinct. The presenting artists of FLATLAND are at the intersection of cultural form, process and meaning in this emerging flat world.

Untitled (Public Display) CAM Perennial 2014

Christie Blizard, Mark Menjivar

Carator: Leslie Moody Castro

For the third consecutive year, Contemporary Art Month (CAM) has chosen the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center to partner in the 2014 CAM Perennial Exhibition. Every year, CAM chooses a curator from outside of San Antonio to give a fresh perspective on the San Antonio art scene. Leslie Moody Castro will serve as this year’s curator of the 2014 CAM Perennial Exhibition.

The 2014 CAM Perennial Exhibition, Untitled(Public Display), is an exhibition in progress. The gallery space of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center will evolve as artists Christie Blizard and Mark Menjivar collaborate with each other, the surrounding community and gallery visitors. Works will be added, taken out of the space, and the process documented on a hand drawn map of the community which will serve as a focal point of the exhibition.

While this project may seem unconventional, the crux of it is to offer the surrounding community and audience the opportunity to play an active role throughout the duration of the exhibition. It is a work in progress and we invite everyone to participate. This project is as reliant upon its audience as it is on the artists participating.

Te Quiero A Lot Mamacitas

Cruz Ortiz

May 9—Jul 14, 2014, Espacio Gallery

“Te Quiero A Lot Mamacitas” exemplifies Cruz Ortiz’ way of blending language, imagery and mixed meanings with a rasquache approach. By pulling from art movements, such as Pop Art, Conceptualism and Art Brut, Ortiz spontaneously blasts both humorous and dramatic Tex-Mex cultural realities. Cruz gives us permission to poke fun at our culture, honor our habits and love our deep-rooted lifestyle, all at the same time.

La Carpa

La Carpa Guadalupe offers a traveling exhibition emulation the traditional Mexican tent shows of the early 1900s. Mirroring the exuberant spirit and resourceful energy of the artists of san Antonio, La Carpa Guadalupe carves a blank space for the artist, challenging the notion of conventional exhibition practice.

Sundown Anthology

Ray Santisteban

Feb 22—Apr 26, 2014, Galería Guadalupe

San Antonio is bird city and at dusk during the winter roost, countless grackle silhouettes are seen swirling, clustering on tree limbs and clinging in synchronized files to power lines. Sundown Anthology presents a compilation of Ray Santisteban’s practice of pursuing this perennial phe­nomenon using hybrid iPhone camera apps, capturing the immediacy of twilight and bird flight in the grainy contrast of dark blurred forms against the failing light.

Alternate Currents

Avi Avalos, Jesse Amado, Ken Little, Karen Mahaffy, Anita Valencia

Curator: Patty Ortiz

October 25, 2013—March 3, 2014

This exhibition investigates light and ideas that arise from emissions of its spectra. Given a single suspended light bulb, each of the five artists respond to the object with their own interpretive invention.

Bite Like A Kitty: CAM Perennial 2013

Curator: Bill Arning

March 15— June 1, 2013

Bite Like A Kitty was a post-punk rock band I loved long ago, and the phrase that served as the band’s oddball moniker returned too my consciousness while visiting eighteen artists’ studios in San Antonio over two days early January 2013. There was a notable pervasive sensibility that was biting by sweet, a place between anger and humor, sorrow and joy. I would be foolish to try to construct an overarching San Antonio zeitgeist from my sample, but the four artists I have invited to preset their work, all seemed dedicated to amusing us as they simultaneously give us some nettlesome material to chew on.

Bite Like A Kitty is a far from a coherently thematic exhibition, tight connections may only make themselves apparent when the works are installed. Its bubbling provocations share nothing but an overarching sensibility that seems appropriate for our times, and promises to deliver some troubling fun as well.

This River Here investigates the connection between word and image, asking artists to visualize the words of San Antonio’s poet laureate, Dr. Carmen Tafolla. The end result is one continuous drawing flowing and suspended throughout the gallery, creating a physical manifestation of Dr. Tafolla’s poem, This River Here. The exhibition takes the poet’s perspective by exploding the poem’s verses into a multiplicity of meaning and representation.

Natural Abstraction: 2012 CAM Perennial

Curator: Frances Colpitt

March 9—March 25, 2012

Selected by critic, curator and art historian, Frances Colpitt — nine San Antonio artists work in a variety of mediums, push the technical limits and the sophistication of the arts within the city.

In collaboration with Artpace, the GCAC presents By Permit Only, an exhibition that takes the unauthorized postering methods of street artists and brings this conversation into the gallery. Ten artists have been asked to generate site specific works that will juxtapose high brow, vis-à-vis the white walled galeria against the commonplace of the alley. This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Linda Pace Foundation.

Trans/Action

Ester Partigas, Máximo Gonzalez, Margarita Cabrera, Kimberly Aubuchon

Curator: Patty Ortiz

April 7—June 25, 2011

Trans/Action presents four artists’ investigations of economy and its many forms. These artists take a fresh look at how our society views currency as an evaluation of ones worth and power. The artists of Trans/Action highlight our culture’s growing preoccupation with materialism and consumerism.

100 Palabras

Curator: Patty Ortiz

January 13—March 19, 2011

100 Palabras is an exhibition featuring the collaboration between literature and visual arts. From hieroglyphs to the surrealists, artists have influenced and challenged one another through an exchange of themes and techniques. 100 Palabras brings an illuminating microcosm of this relation into the gallery, vis-à-vis the talents of local artists.

Artist Lab

Through the generous support of the Surdna Foundation, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center is proud to initiate the Artist Lab, a fellowship that provides selected local visual artists a place for showing and selling art, an educational experience in both creative and business development, and an opportunity to build new networks between local artists and the national artistic field. The Guadalupe will select a number of artists every year and support them in reaching their creative and financial goals.